International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way. We have heard so much drivel from people with a different opinion from me. I am trying to get some balance into the debate.

When Labour Members argue that we should be judged only on how much money we spend, it does not come as a great surprise, because that is what Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians have always argued for. I remember in the last Parliament asking why truancy under the then Labour Government was so terrible, and the Minister’s answer was: “We’ve spent £1 billion extra tackling truancy”, as if that was fine. Truancy had got worse, but that did not matter because they had spent £1 billion extra on tackling it. It struck me then as even more criminal than ever. They had spent £1 billion and truancy had still got worse. If they had said, “We’ve saved a bit of money and it’s got a bit worse”, that might have been some justification, but for it to get worse and to proudly boast, “That’s all right because we spent £1 billion extra”, is complete nonsense. So of course Labour and the Liberal Democrats believe in the Bill.

What I cannot understand in my heart is how any self-respecting person who wants to call themselves a Conservative can possibly subscribe to the view that we should be judged simply on a piece of legislation that sets out only how much we are to spend, and that it is irrelevant what we do with the money or whether we can afford it. Those should be the things a Conservative thinks about, but many of my colleagues seem to want to abandon their Conservative principles. I should perhaps be reassured that had the Government taken my view, most of my hon. Friends would be arguing the opposite of what they have been arguing today. They might be supporting this policy not through sincere belief but because of their desire for advancement. I do not know whether they believe in the Bill. In many respects, I hope they support it because they think it will help their advancement, because if they genuinely believe in it, I do not see how they can call themselves Conservatives in any shape or form.

There seems to be a view—a politically correct attack to close down debate—that runs simply: either a person is for international aid and therefore in favour of the Bill, or they are against international aid and therefore oppose the Bill. It is an all-or-nothing argument. If someone criticises Britain’s huge, often mismanaged aid budget, they are accused of not wanting to help the neediest in the world. It is designed to cover up mistakes in the overseas aid budget and ignore shortfalls. This politically correct campaign has allowed international aid to linger as such an inefficient part of Government spending, without sufficient checks or proper rigour.

I believe that humanitarian aid is very important. It provides relief for people who suffer from acute distress following conflict, famine, natural disasters and other emergencies. That work is vital. This country has always stepped up to its responsibilities, and I have no doubt it will always do so, when it sees images around the world of tragedies taking place. However, I am sceptical about the aid that dominates more than nine tenths of official aid spending—development aid. It is the predominance of this aid spending that we are mainly focusing on here. This aid offers continuous support to recipient countries in the areas of education, health, water and sanitation, government and civil society, economic infrastructure, economic production, debt relief and other things across many different Departments.

We have to consider the country’s financial position. Thanks to considerable overspends over many years by the Labour party, we have a huge debt mountain, and scandalously our debt payments are still as big as the budget of one of the biggest Departments. I hope that the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill will allow me to say that, because of the disastrous way in which the former Chancellor and previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, ran this country, it seems that he was determined to make us a recipient of international aid rather than a contributor to it.

At a time of national austerity, it seems to me sensible that we would want to reduce the aid spending given to other countries. It would not have been a bad thing even to have frozen aid spending to other countries, but to increase it massively, as we have done, at the same time as we are making the case that we have no money and have to cut spending everywhere and cut our cloth accordingly, is completely and utterly ridiculous.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Would our constituents be right in asking this pertinent question: why is it appropriate for the Government to seek to hypothecate into the future for future Parliaments on this area of expenditure when in every other domestic area, including important areas such as literacy, social care and cancer, they set their face against such hypothecation? Is that not a reasonable question?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I personally think that if my constituents were asked for what area it was more important to guarantee a certain level of expenditure—the NHS or overseas aid; the defence budget or overseas aid; the police budget or overseas aid; the education budget or overseas aid?—the overseas aid budget would come off second best in any head-to-head contest. Lord only knows why on earth people in this place think that the public believe uniquely that this particular Government Department should have its funding increased massively and then protected at that level. To be perfectly honest, I think they all need to get out more.